Welcome to Vancouver. Population: You.

So in light of our current plight (cancellations and mid-x-Canada detours) we’ve had the additional travel drama of two of our flights being booked out of Vancouver. Just switch them to leave glorious Calgary, you say? That would be far too easy! I called WestJet yesterday morning when the fare was 289$ to switch the two Van City flights to Calgary, sounds great, yeahs? Except (of course) when I called back to actually MAKE the reservation we were then quoted the new exciting price of 1,400$ CAD – to change the same flight that’s going THROUGH Calgary anyway!

Brief moments of psychosis later, it was decided that we would make the trek to Vancouver in our sweet ride rather than take the chance of being beheaded on a shitty Greyhound bus (which would also .. um, suck) to Van, to airport hell (whose idea was that anyway?). In additional exciting news, our Dj Sam had had an accident requiring possible skin grafts (kidding) and antibiotics for blood poisoning (not kidding) as misdiagnosed by the Edmonton doctor.

Driving through the mountains was cool enough, as far as terrifying twisting car rides in pouring rain behind swerving transport trucks go. Apparantly Sleep-Eze turns into Red Bull in my system under these conditions, and I spent much of the drive in a state of anxious gasping. However, running into a rainbow as we came through the Rockies (the brightest one I’d ever seen) made the hellishness diminish at least enough to run through Whitney Houston’s better catalog with the other Royals.

Which brought us to Kamloops, the place where everything closes at 9 pm! Which is really, like, 6 in the evening or something because mountain time is so fucked up. There’s not much I can tell you about Kamloops, but there was one particularly adorable little skateboarder kid who approached us to talk about my shoes.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS through mountains and valleys, past Optimus Prime and his crew who were dominating the Trans Canada Highway (which has, by the way, the most demented on- and off-ramps I’ve ever seen on a highway), we arrive finally at the Vancouver airport at around 230am Vancouver time (which is like, 330 MST and 530 EST – I think – I’m basically lost right now) to wait for our flight that leaves at 7am.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is that it’s a thrillride waiting in an empty airport (which seems to be a recurrent theme for me, having made Gatwick, JFK and LAX my homes away from home). The people working are nice enough and have yet to bother me about trivialities like “Why are you working at an abandoned safety check-in desk!?” The answer to that being “I am avoiding the desolation of the couch area where multiple travellers (likely bloody patchouli-scented hippies) are sprawled in gorgeous positions, their hair leaving oil-halos on the permeable vinyl.”

Puke.

Wish me a safe flight (I hate flying) and I’ll update you from my hotel in St John, New Bruswick.